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Colorado eyes future of virtual court in post-pandemic world
Oct 8, 2021
To go to court in Colorado these days, you might need to drive to the courthouse, park, pass through security — belts and watches off, please — don a mask (or maybe not) and put your seat in a seat. Or you might just curl up on your couch, power up a laptop and log in to a video chat for virtual court.
It all depends on which judge is hearing your case and what exactly you need to get done.
Colorado’s initially ubiquitous use of virtual courts during the pandemic has faded into a patchwork of judge-by-judge decisions about when proceedings go forward in-person or online, even as many in the justice system call for some virtual options to be preserved post-COVID.
[..]
The Colorado Supreme Court has yet to put out any detailed statewide guidance for how virtual courts should be used long-term, but Chief Justice Brian Boatright recently formed a working group of eight chief judges to examine how online courts work (and when they don’t) as a precursor to potential long-term strategies, said Weld County Chief Judge James Hartmann, who co-chairs the chief judge’s council.
[..]
The committee, which includes chief judges from rural and urban judicial districts, will ask for input from attorneys, court staff and other stakeholders in the justice system before presenting their findings to Boatright, Hartmann said. He estimated that process may take 30 to 60 days.
“We want to be able to use Webex when Webex is an effective way of conducting court proceedings,” Hartmann said. “We certainly don’t want to trade convenience for someone’s due process rights. But that balance will be there — we definitely can strike the balance, we just don’t know where the needle is going to fall yet.”
Earlier this year, Boatright gave chief judges the authority to make policies on virtual appearances for each of Colorado’s 22 judicial districts, continuing the court system’s pandemic-long approach of letting local jurisdictions make their own rules within a broad framework. A Denver Post review of those policies shows many chief judges further delegated decision-making to individual judges.
[..]
In the Morphew case, Chief Judge Patrick Murphy cited “enormous public interest” as a reason not to stream the hearing online. He noted that more than 1,100 people tuned in to watch a prior broadcast of a hearing in the case, and that some viewers carried on an “inappropriate” conversation using the streaming service’s chat feature.
“Broadcasting the proceedings via Webex would very likely result in thousands of people viewing the hearing,” he wrote in an August order. “This would seem to thwart the purpose of limiting expanded media coverage in criminal cases. Those purposes include not interfering with the rights of the parties to a fair trial, not detracting from the decorum and dignity of the court and not creating adverse effects that would be greater than those caused by traditional media coverage.”
Oct 8, 2021
To go to court in Colorado these days, you might need to drive to the courthouse, park, pass through security — belts and watches off, please — don a mask (or maybe not) and put your seat in a seat. Or you might just curl up on your couch, power up a laptop and log in to a video chat for virtual court.
It all depends on which judge is hearing your case and what exactly you need to get done.
Colorado’s initially ubiquitous use of virtual courts during the pandemic has faded into a patchwork of judge-by-judge decisions about when proceedings go forward in-person or online, even as many in the justice system call for some virtual options to be preserved post-COVID.
[..]
The Colorado Supreme Court has yet to put out any detailed statewide guidance for how virtual courts should be used long-term, but Chief Justice Brian Boatright recently formed a working group of eight chief judges to examine how online courts work (and when they don’t) as a precursor to potential long-term strategies, said Weld County Chief Judge James Hartmann, who co-chairs the chief judge’s council.
[..]
The committee, which includes chief judges from rural and urban judicial districts, will ask for input from attorneys, court staff and other stakeholders in the justice system before presenting their findings to Boatright, Hartmann said. He estimated that process may take 30 to 60 days.
“We want to be able to use Webex when Webex is an effective way of conducting court proceedings,” Hartmann said. “We certainly don’t want to trade convenience for someone’s due process rights. But that balance will be there — we definitely can strike the balance, we just don’t know where the needle is going to fall yet.”
Earlier this year, Boatright gave chief judges the authority to make policies on virtual appearances for each of Colorado’s 22 judicial districts, continuing the court system’s pandemic-long approach of letting local jurisdictions make their own rules within a broad framework. A Denver Post review of those policies shows many chief judges further delegated decision-making to individual judges.
[..]
In the Morphew case, Chief Judge Patrick Murphy cited “enormous public interest” as a reason not to stream the hearing online. He noted that more than 1,100 people tuned in to watch a prior broadcast of a hearing in the case, and that some viewers carried on an “inappropriate” conversation using the streaming service’s chat feature.
“Broadcasting the proceedings via Webex would very likely result in thousands of people viewing the hearing,” he wrote in an August order. “This would seem to thwart the purpose of limiting expanded media coverage in criminal cases. Those purposes include not interfering with the rights of the parties to a fair trial, not detracting from the decorum and dignity of the court and not creating adverse effects that would be greater than those caused by traditional media coverage.”
